Keiko honda biography

Keiko Honda is a scientist, writer, community organizer and painter.
Keiko Honda is a scientist, writer, community organizer and painter.
She is highly experienced in corporate management, financial economics, ESG/Sustainability.

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BIO

Biography

Keiko Honda is a scientist, writer, community organizer and painter. She holds a PhD in international community health from New York University, but when she suddenly contracted a rare autoimmune disease that confined her to a wheelchair for life, she had to leave her career in research at Columbia University in New York. After moving to Vancouver in 2009, Keiko started hosting artist salons, for which she was awarded the City of Vancouver’s Remarkable Women award in 2014. Shortly thereafter, she founded the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society to bridge generations and cultures through the arts and to offer members of marginalized communities in Vancouver opportunities for artistic self-discovery. She teaches the aesthetics of co-creation in the Liberal Arts and 55+ Program at Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver, BC, and enjoys watercolour painting and hosting her salons.

ADDRESS

City: Vancouver, Province/Territory: British Columbia

GENRE

creative non-fiction

PUBLICATIONS

Publications

PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND WORKSH

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Accidental Blooms

A profound personal story of loss and upheaval, self-discovery and healing, Accidental Blooms is a deeply moving memoir celebrating the unpredictable beauty of life.

Keiko Honda is living a successful, busy life as a scientist of cancer epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City when one morning she abruptly loses all strength in her legs. She phones a friend to care for her twenty-month-old daughter and rushes to the hospital. Within hours, she can barely breathe. She soon discovers she is permanently paralyzed from the chest down due to a rare autoimmune disease with a frequency of approximately one case per million per year. Suddenly, she’s that one. As Keiko struggles for life, she learns through lived experience the importance of community to healing, one of her prior research interests at Columbia.

Seeking a wheelchair-accessible home closer to nature in which to raise her daughter, Keiko moves to Vancouver, Canada. She starts hosting informal artist salons, forms a mutually supportive group of artists and art-loving neighbours a

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Keiko Honda has served as an independent Director of the Recruit Holdings’ Board since 2022. She is highly experienced in corporate management, financial economics, ESG/Sustainability. Ms. Honda began her career at Bain & Company Japan in 1984. In 1986, she joined Shearson Lehman Brothers Securities Co., Ltd., and later joined McKinsey & Company. Ms. Honda became the first female senior partner in the Asian division, where she advised on corporate strategy and M&A for 24 years since 1989. Ms. Honda was appointed Executive Vice President in 2013, and served as CEO and Executive Vice President of Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency of the World Bank Group from 2014 to 2019. In 2020, she served as an Adjunct Professor and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar on ESG investing at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.